We learned yesterday what we suspected to be the eventual outcome: Jevon Carter, the national defensive player of the year, will be back with West Virginia’s men’s basketball team in the 2017-18 season. He entered the NBA draft last month, wasn’t invited to the NBA combine and returned to campus for the start of summer classes last week, and those final two items were our strongest and best available indications he’d play his senior season with the Mountaineers.

How he arrived at that conclusion, and namely where he went and who he spoke to along the way, were the things we did not know.

Until now.

The process of an underclassman entering the draft isn’t new to the Mountaineers. Joe Alexander, Devin Ebanks, Kevin Jones, Juwan Staten, Devin Williams and now Carter. There are variables, but there are similarities, too. For starters, players absolutely cannot associate with an agent and hope to retain eligibility. Typically, a college team will run operations for a player, if only to build a wall. That was the case with Carter. Much of the communication went through the basketball office, and Carter was kept up to speed with developments.

But the NBA does some work, too. Carter filled out some paperwork, and WVU sent that to the NBA. The league then dispersed Carter’s candidacy among a bunch of front offices, and those teams returned their reviews to the NBA, which then forwarded that long to WVU. The team then handed it over to Carter.

This is what’s happened when a player, like Carter, says he was able to “gain valuable feedback that I can use to prepare for the future.”

And, no, Carter wasn’t invited to the combine. He was still allowed to audition for teams, and Carter did have a workout with one playoff team. He considered the sum of the advice and his experiences and decided to return to school.

“He did an evaluation with the NBA where they sent his name out to a variety of NBA teams to get an idea of his draft status and whether he’s a first-round or second-round pick or if he’s not going to be drafted at all,” Harrison said. “It was pretty much a consensus that with another year he’d be draft-eligible. Depending on the workouts this year, there was a possibility he’d be a second-round pick, but there was nothing concrete at all.”

Harrison said Carter had a workout with the Boston Celtics and that Carter was content with the reviews from there and around the league.

“Jevon went through the process in a systematic and professional manner by exploring his options,” coach Bob Huggins said in a press release. “He was able to gain feedback from NBA professionals that will help him in the future. We’re pleased that he will be a Mountaineer for his senior season.”

Now Carter can put his hands on the remaining unknowns. Where is WVU in the preseason Big 12 and top 25 polls? Is he the conference’s preseason player of the year? Does he end WVU’s 34-year run of seasons without a regular-season conference player of the year? Will the Mountaineers end Kansas’ 13-year reign atop the standings? Can Carter become the Big 12’s first four-time member of the all-defense team? Is he a 2018 draft pick?